Hodinkee's Watch Report: Vintage Hunting In Miami

Buying a new watch a new watch isn't a particularly hard thing to do in most cases. Sure, you have to save your pennies, do the research, and decide where to buy, but if you want the watch you can walk into a store and find it. Vintage watches are the complete opposite: it's all about the hunt. As far as finding watches in North America goes, you'd be hard pressed to find better hunting grounds than the annual Miami Beach Antique Show, which took place just last weekend.

Dealers from all across the United States, the UK, Italy, and other hotbeds of vintage collecting all descend on the convention center in Miami Beach for five days of nonstop vintage goodness. The watches are mixed in amongst paintings, porcelain, jewelry, furniture, and pretty much anything else old and collectable, but if you're willing to put in some effort you can find some really spectacular watches. Of course we had to go down for a few days to see what we could dig up.

On the more absurd end of the spectrum, we found two incredibly rare Patek Philippe ref. 1463 waterproof chronographs. Both have the rarer full Breguet numeral dials (instead of having numbers at 12 and 6 and batons for the other markers), but one is stainless steel and the other solid pink gold. This watch is quintessential Patek Philippe, and even though it was made for 25 years, only 750 total watches were made—the vast majority in yellow gold. Sure, the pair will set you back a little more than $1 million, but you deserve the best, right?

Coming out of the stratosphere (a little bit, at least), there were a few Omega Speedmaster Professionals with extremely tropical dials (i.e., faded from black to brown), Rolex Day-Dates with all kinds of exotic dials and the day displayed in various languages, a rare white gold Omega Constellation, early Audemars Piguet Royal Oaks, more Paul Newman Daytonas than you could possibly count, and literally a bin of Rolex DateJusts. We could go on, but you can just check out our full photo report from the show for more.

It doesn't matter whether you're looking for your first vintage watch for a few hundred dollars or for that collection-making piece at $1 million, you can find it at the Miami Beach Antique Show. And, there's a good chance that those two watches might be sitting side-by-side in a little glass case tucked between a statue of a horse and a bright green vase. Like we said, it's all about the hunt.

Stephen J. Pulvirent is the associate editor of HODINKEE. For the latest in horological news, reviews, and original stories, visit HODINKEE.com.